


A Day in the Life of Mr. Gold

by ChloeWinchester



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-07-05
Packaged: 2018-04-07 18:45:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4274007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChloeWinchester/pseuds/ChloeWinchester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While the town of Storybrooke is cursed, its inhabitants fall into a thirty year routine, and Mr. Gold is not immune</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Day in the Life of Mr. Gold

Standing in the shop for eight hours. Dusting things, turning them over and knowing they were all meaningless to him.

Tankards engraved with character traits, a windmill sculpture meant for a front lawn, the helm of a ship, a delicately crafted unicorn mobile and thousands of other little things, worthless things. Not to those it belonged to, but for him they were simply a means to take up space. To crowd him in and make it appear that he wasn’t alone.

People came in now and again and purchased nothing. They couldn’t really alter themselves at all in their patterns, and there were certain things he could change about himself, just not where Regina could see. She might have a bit of a fit if she knew.

Every trinket, every little flicker of memory that belonged to someone else, had given that life meaning, was special. He wondered why Her Majesty decided to take them and place them here as a unrealized taunt to the others when she gained nothing from it.

He wondered that every day when she walked past.

Today he was polishing silver, leaning on the cane he loathed to be dependent on as he went from case to case. Of course he would limp. Of course he would have that little pathetic weakness that amplified his impishness and made the inlaid superiority of his tenants harder to swallow.

It was nice, however, to have that power over them despite their disdain. That he could handle easily. Owning Moe French gave him the sweetest of satisfactions and one day…one day he would truly take the revenge he craved.

But he had to wait.

The sun had hit the crystals hanging in the window, which meant he’d put the silver down, limp over to the safe, and look between it and the mirror on the wall for fifteen minutes before he decided to open it.

The scales were gone. The gritty sandpaper qualities, the gold tints that turned green and gray in some lights, the way his hair lay was all gone.

Now it was shoulder length brown hair with the same gray it held when he was a simple spinner, his hands just as lined and callused with age, ankle gnarled and battered as it had ever been.

He looked at himself, at the dark lavender of his eyes from his not sleeping, how gaunt and terrible he looked despite his smirks and quietly threatening tones that ‘proved’ otherwise to onlookers. He couldn’t look for long. This world or another, he still thought himself hideous. And broken especially.

The same thoughts, every day.

His hand hesitated on the door of the safe and he shut his eyes. It would hurt, but it was the only solace he had. But why be reminded of pain he could do nothing about? Why make himself ache over some _girl?_

No, no, not some girl. His girl. The girl who he sent to her death with her soft smiles and gentle hands and beautiful lips that he turned away, he turned her away and she was tortured because of him! Threw herself off the tower to save herself from more torment what a monster he was. What a horrific, horrible man to be the cause of such a radiant light leaving this world-

_“IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN YOU, NOT HER!”_

Every day.

He roughly swallowed the tears in his eyes and dropped his hand.

“Rumple, don’t run from it.”

He looked up, and there she was, standing behind him in the mirror.

“You- You’re early, you’re not supposed to be here now,” he forced, voice gruff to keep it from breaking. She smiled, and her dimples alone made his heart seize in pain.

“Shh…” She came closer, putting her hands on his shoulders as she’d done before. “I’m here,” she whispered. “I’m always here, Rumple. It’s okay. You...you don’t want to forget me, do you?” He shut his eyes. He could almost feel her if he concentrated hard enough.

“No,” he breathed. “No, I don’t...I don’t want that.”

He opened the safe.

The cup was there. Her chipped cup. He took it out, held it carefully and tenderly in delicate fingertips. He traced the pattern along its side, so cautious and gentle. He touched it as he would never be able to touch her.

“Not so bad, hm?” He knew the face she would have, he didn’t need to look in the mirror. Her lips folded, brows up, eyes expectant while she waited to be told she was right. He smiled very, very faintly.

“No,” he lied, for her sake. “No, not bad at all.”

He could feel the warmth of her breath on his cheek, the soft little caress of a kiss she left there. But when he reached to touch her face, she was gone.

He turned around, just to be sure, and he was alone.

The cup went back in the safe, his fingers barely brushing against the shawl that was also inside, and closed it.

Rumplestiltskin stood a moment, took a breath, picked up his cane, and made for the door.

The sign was flipped closed, that last little tinkle of the bell over the door made his heart thud painfully just once, and he limped around the building to his car. He would give one look toward the library he kept boarded up and shut tight before rounding the corner, and fought not to look at it when he drove past.

Just like every day.

He drove to the pink house that might have appeared to be nothing like the Dark Castle, but that wasn’t the case.

Inside was stale and dark, the sunlight filtering through the windows and curtains the only warmth in the space. Too much furniture occupied each room, more things that made him feel more hollow than anything, only most of these things were his. Some of them were modern technologies he knew nothing about and didn’t care to learn about, some taken from his castle and placed here.

It was not a home.

No chair looked claimed, no spot at the vast dining room table claimed for him to take his meals. In fact, the kitchen was nearly barren. All that he ate tasted of ash and settled hard in his stomach. He wanted none of it. He only ate, sparingly as he did, to keep his body working in this magicless place.

However, just as it was in the Enchanted Forest, it would not kill him. He’d fainted once from not eating, but he didn’t take himself to the hospital and no one had bothered to notice anything was amiss. He didn’t expect them to either.

A simple multivitamin fixed that.

After what happened in the shop he decided to skip the apple that was to be his dinner and cut through the kitchen to get to the only thing that ever managed to give his mind some peace.

The wheel spun rhythmically and constantly, the soft squeaks, the thread running through his fingers...it quieted his mind. Peace settled over him for a few hours that made the rest bearable.

However his eyes grew tired and ached as well as his joints and he cursed this godforsaken realm for this horrific imperfection.

The Dark One forced himself away and went back inside, the sun long gone, leaving the house silent, black, and empty. Much like his heart.

He struggled up the staircase, teeth gritted, nostrils flared in self-loathing with the chore it was just to climb a simple set of stairs with his bad leg.

He slapped his bedroom door open when he finally reached it and it was the only room in the house that even remotely appeared to be lived in.

Slowly he started undressing, setting cufflinks and the pocket square onto the dresser, his movements practiced and monotonous. He hung the jacket back in the closet with the others, hung up his tie and placed the sleeve garters on the dresser as well. He stripped out of his waistcoat, shoes socks, all that mess and went into the bathroom in his dress shirt and trousers.

He made sure not to face the mirror when he undressed entirely, not wanting to see Her, or the scrawny, sparrow like body he had, wrapped a firm and resentful hand around the grab bar against the shower wall and hatefully used it to step inside.

Like every day.

The water ran down his back and soaked his hair, the steady hiss enough to focus on to hold onto the peace from the wheel. But only for awhile. Then the voices cursed him, gnashed at his self worth, bullied his confidence and beat him with his own memories hard enough to cause a migraine to spark behind his eyes.

He got out. He dried off. He kept his eyes on the floor and not on his body as he hobbled back to his bedroom and changed into simpler, more comfortable clothes.

The bed creaked softly as he got into it, staring at the ceiling and listening to the horrible, echoing silence of the house, his heart in tatters.

He closed his eyes, waiting for it. It would come soon.

But he fell asleep before it could happen. She’d changed things on him today, why?

The sleep Rumplestiltskin experienced was never restful, never fulfilling and never lasted more than an hour or two. He tossed and turned, he sweated and called out names of people who would never answer. He cried and screamed and lost himself in the throes of his horrific nightmare before he was mercifully released from it.

He sat up with a rough cry for his child, his hand reaching for him in the dark. But Baelfire wasn’t there. His lips shook, the snarling voices reminding him that he sent his boy away, he let go of him, he trapped him here and he could be dead, he could be long dead and he never got to say he was sorry-

“Stop,” he breathed, pressing his face into his knee and shoving the heels of his hands against his temples. “Just, just stop it.”

Every night…

“Rumple.” No, no, not again, Please not again. He kept his eyes closed, let her touch him, let himself pretend.

“Belle,” he whispered. “Please, Belle, I can’t- I can’t. I can’t look at you, I can’t listen to you. It hurts too much, sweetheart, please.”

“You want me to leave?”

His breath hitched and he folded his lips. She couldn’t do that, she couldn’t say things like that, not with a broken little voice so pained he’d caused her enough pain. “No, Belle. No, I don’t want you to leave.”

He forced his eyes to open and he looked at her. So pale and beautiful in the dim moonlight, her eyes sparkling, her lips pulled into a sad smile.

“I can’t sleep,” he confessed. “I haven’t for… I don’t know how long it’s been. I really don’t, I can’t remember. I stopped counting. I can’t stand the counting.”

“Do you miss me?” She whispered, moving closer to him.

He nodded weakly. “Oh yes,” he breathed. “Every day.” More tears filled his eyes. “I miss you every day, Belle, I’m so sorry.”

“Shh…” An imagined feeling of warm, soft lips on his forehead. “It’s not your fault, Rumple.”

“No, it is. It is, I did this. I did. M-me… I killed you, Belle.” He sobbed once and moved to dissolve in her arms, but she vanished. He could never touch her.

Every time.

He went back to the wheel.

“Cleans the mind, soothes the soul, cleans the mind, soothes the soul…” He muttered to himself, working it until his fingers bled. Because she was there. She was still there trying to talk to him, trying to get him to listen to her and smile at him and say sweet things and he wanted none of it.

“Rumple, look at me,” she pleaded.

“No,” he grunted, tears on his face and he shook his head, hard. “No, I won’t. I won’t.”

“Why?”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“I SAID I CAN’T!” He stood abruptly and slammed his hand into the wheel, knocking it over and into the table, shattering several bottles.

Her imagined figure jumped, cowering away from him. “Why can’t you see that, Belle? Why can’t you understand how much it breaks me to do this? Why can’t you just leave me alone so I can- So I can-”

He looked to the wheel and her eyes followed.

“So you can forget,” she hiccupped, her voice breaking. “That’s why you spin. To forget. You do want to forget me.”

He closed his eyes. “If I don’t...If I don’t I’ll...I’ll die, Belle. It’ll kill me, I can’t bear it.” She cupped his cheek, brushed her lips against his. Fake. A ghost, a nothing.

“No matter what happens, ever, whether you can see me or not? I will always be with you, Rumple.” She pressed her tiny hand over his chest, over his heart. “Always.”

He gripped the cane tight and willed her away, opening his eyes and finding empty air in front of him.

He would push through this, for his son. He would endure this.

Rumplestiltskin picked the wheel back up and had the glass cleaned up just as the sun started to rise.

Another day.

And it started all over again.

 


End file.
